These Violent Times Read online

  Avery displayed his lapel badge to the passenger. “As it happens, sir, both.”

  The man in the homburg tipped his brim with two manicured fingertips, then stepped down with, “Excellent; then this should be an efficient transaction.”

  Avery held in his belly, resisted the impulse to slouch. He wanted to make an impression.

  The man’s Germanic accent, manner, beard, and suit were all precisely cut to fit, and he stepped from the hearse to the porch without any mud clinging to cuffs or shoes, as if it wouldn’t dare. He kept the leather satchel to his chest as he spoke. “I am Weiber-Krauss, a doctor, and you’ve had a recent death, I understand.”

  “You understand correctly,” Avery said, nodding slightly.

  “And you, sir, are . . . ?”

  “Sheriff-Mayor Avery,” he said, using the compound title he preferred.

  The newcomer seemed to respond favorably to the title, or to the formality. Something.

  “I am pleased to meet a man of such achievement,” Weiber-Krauss said. “I’m here for the deceased, as you can see from the transportation.”

  “By whose authority, since I do have the badge?” Avery asked.

  “I respect your position”—Weiber-Krauss held up the satchel—“and you’ll see that I’m fully sanctioned.”

  “I see that you have things,” Avery countered.

  “There are documents in my grip. I am not fool enough to try and pass counterfeit skills—or counterfeit credentials—on a man of experience.” A nod of the head in Avery’s direction seemed to emphasize the respect he had demonstrated before.

  “Good to know.” Avery had seen the doctor’s bag from the window, and the transportation of course. He had assumed why the man had come. But he wasn’t quite ready to cooperate, yet. “Where do you hail from, Doctor?”

  “A treatment facility, not far from here. But if you mean my origins, a village outside of Berlin.”

  “Berlin—the across-the-ocean Berlin?”

  “The selfsame. My family is a very old one.”

  “I guess everyone’s is, no, Doctor?” Avery suggested.

  “Point to you,” Weiber-Krauss said stiffly.

  Avery’s brow crinkled. “You know any German concern interested in raising horses?”

  “Not my field,” the man replied, indicating the satchel.

  “No, of course,” Avery said. “Tell me, how in the world did you find yourself in Good Fortune?”

  “Ah, how does anyone?”

  “Silver?” Avery hazarded.

  “I was looking into the purchase of a mine with an eye to revitalizing it. And perhaps the local economy.”

  Avery gave Weiber-Krauss his laugh, with, “So you know our story.”

  “I’ve heard.”

  “Have you been in this country a long time?”

  “Yes” the newcomer said, adding, “and it’s still common practice to ask what side a man was on during the conflicts so you know how to react to him.” Weiber-Krauss paused, adjusting gold-framed bifocals. “I was with the Fifth German Rifles, under Colonel von Annenberg. We hailed from New York.”

  The driver, coiling the whip, leaned down from his bench, his accent betraying the low Austrian mountains. “That means Union.”

  Avery said, “I’m well aware, thank you.”

  “You are welcome,” the driver said. “What about you?” the man inquired.

  Avery didn’t think it was any of that man’s business, but the question was floated just the same. He looked up at the driver, leaning even closer, his body draped over most of the hearse’s roof, and said back to him, “I abstained.”

  The driver huffed. “A sheriff—afraid?”

  “No, that means the sheriff, who was not then sheriff, abstained,” Avery said. “Age and physical limitations.”

  Avery wasn’t liking or trusting this crankier European goon. His right thumb was hooked behind a button of his vest, allowing his index finger to dangle into his pocket. It was on the trigger of the pocket derringer, and he was figuring his aim from the jacket pocket, roughly between the driver’s eyes. The little guns weren’t that precise, but precise enough to hit the target or an eye.

  “I ask you to forgive my driver’s manner,” Weiber-Krauss said. “Smith is not a social animal.”

  “He is if you leave off the ’social,’” Avery suggested. “And . . . Smith?” he hooted. “An unusual name in these parts. Except in hotel ledgers and on the lips of a certain kind of woman.”

  Smith scowled down but Weiber-Krauss chortled.

  “You have humor, sir, but you’d find the family name of my driver quite unpronounceable. Smith, which is actually Schmidt, is a moniker. Awarded by myself when I discovered him in a European carnival. Selected, on the spot, because each of his fists has the weight of a blacksmith’s anvil.”

  Avery just now noticed them, and Weiber-Krauss was not incorrect.

  Smith had dropped like a full bucket in the wall, transferring from the hearse to the porch. The here-and-there rotted planks bent under his weight. He was shorter by several inches than Avery but more densely packed with muscle. He took his place behind Weiber-Krauss, the coiled bullwhip in hand. His eyes were clearly taking target practice.

  Avery’s three-chin smile froze. “All of this is very impressive.”

  Weiber-Krauss smiled solicitously. “So, we know each other a little, and now you can let go of the gun?” His eyes dropped briefly to the vest pocket.

  Avery remained absolutely still. He wondered if everyone west of the Appalachians knew about the little derringer.

  “What about all this hoopla of your being ’fully sanctioned’?” Avery asked.

  “An interesting way to put it,” Weiber-Krauss said as he lit a meerschaum pipe taken from his satchel. “The correct question is, ’What about the dead?’ They—all three of them—were my patients.”

  “I see.”

  “There are eager kin. I hope you will show me to them, now?”

  “With pleasure,” Avery said. “They are ripening.”

  The horses of the would-be killers were still in stalls with the bodies of the would-be killers laid out on the stable’s workbench, saddles neatly stacked beside like a row of grave markers. Wrapped in blood-spotted sheets, lengths of cord were tied around the middles and throats of the bodies, lashing the coverings tight. The youngest also had a burlap sack pulled over his head, for dignity’s sake, his patched raincoat buttoned, and arms angel-folded across his chest.

  Avery commented on the vignette. “The youngest got a little too close, needed a little extra help keeping his parts together.”

  “Of all the ways they imagined their plan would work, ending here certainly wasn’t one of them,” Weiber-Krauss said. “Very foolish, and didn’t listen to any reason from me.”

  Avery said, “You knew they were riding in?”

  “As I think you did, yes? Weren’t you complicit?”

  Avery didn’t answer. Bishop scared him even when he wasn’t there.

  Pipe in his teeth, Weiber-Krauss slipped on a pair of linen gloves, nodded to Smith, who tore open the raincoat, his thick, knotted hands like bear claws, revealing the shotgun wounds that split the youngest cousin’s chest. There was a gun, still in his hand. He was impressed the mayor-sheriff had not cracked the stiffened fingers to remove it.

  Weiber-Krauss tilted the body to its side, examining the bruising around the broken hip and back. “How much did you clean this boy?”

  “Well, not much was needed,” Avery said almost jubilantly. “Most of him was on the outside. We mopped that up.”

  “I see,” Weiber-Krauss said, still examining the wound.

  Avery said, “We wrapped him like a Christmas present, and brought him in here to join his compatriots. We figured someone would come.”

  “Why?”

  “They said they had folk.”

  Weiber-Krauss looked at all three victims, then rose. “These wounds are crawling with insects, and there are
pieces of broken glass.”

  “Again, Doctor, we got him up off the ground.”

  “After a fall from how high? And backwards?” Weiber-Krauss flicked pellets of high-grade shot from a chest wound, held them between his fingers.

  “Yes,” Avery said. This here’s courtesy of Dr. John Bishop. At least, what he’s become. I’m sure we’ll be reading of this soon enough, yes?”

  “Not by choice,” Weiber-Krauss said.

  “I wasn’t present, thank God, but he took care of business, partly in defense of myself,” Avery said. “As you claim, these three had it in their minds to challenge Dr. Bishop, and collect a bounty from some private party. I had the authority, and ruled the killing justified.”

  “I would expect nothing less,” Weiber-Krauss said. “These three should never have tried; their thinking was clouded by war trauma. The youngster was an outright simpleton.”

  “He was offered a chance to leave, didn’t take it,” Avery said. “I heard it all.”

  “Which helped you reach your legal finding,” Weiber-Krauss said, as Smith stepped around the side of the corpses, running the bullwhip through his hands, shedding the braids of the horse sweat.

  “That’s right,” Avery answered, watching the driver.

  “Don’t be alarmed. That’s his habit,” Weiber-Krauss said, lifting the wrapped head of another aging corpse, feeling the rigor mortis in his neck. “Ah, Bishop. I was in residence at the State Hospital in Pueblo. Before that, I served beside Doctor Bishop during the conflict, and knew, admired him, quite well.”

  “Did you?” Avery said. “Did you ever tell your story?”

  Weiber-Krauss waved a hand. “I am by nature a private man,” he said.

  “You worked beside him . . . but you’re not a surgeon,” Avery clarified.

  “Mental disorders became my specialty, as I saw what plagued so many returning home.” He smiled. “But I am well familiar with the instruments of the medical doctor.”

  “You are also a man of achievement.” Avery returned the compliment in a voice more sincere than when Weiber-Krauss had said it. As he spoke, Avery moved closer to the back wall of the stable, to the shadows, out of Smith’s reach. Then he said, “John’s been in my circle for years, so I’m sure you and I would have some interesting experiences to swap.”

  “We will have to see about that.” Weiber-Krauss snapped open the satchel, fixed his eyes on Avery. “Are my full credentials necessary?”

  Avery was busy looking at Smith, the whip stretched between his fists, and said, “Oh no, you’ve established yourself perfectly. You’ll see these three are properly taken care of ?”

  Weiber-Krauss said, “That depends on those who have right and title to their remains. I personally would not pack them in ice and put them on a display in a pine box as was done with Jesse James; however . . . there is opportunity to charge the curious to gawk at crosses over empty graves, as their mother does.”

  Avery smiled. “I am not one to deny a fellow citizen a moneymaking proposition.”

  Weiber-Krauss smiled devilishly. “You’re an interesting personality, Mr. Avery. As with your god, I think you see everything in terms of business. Certainly you dickered your friendship with Dr. Bishop, and now, these dead. Smith and I could retreat to some territorial office to investigate the events, but I prefer no issues, no conflicts.”

  “You’re about to make some kind of proposal.”

  “You have a good sense of things,” Weiber-Krauss complimented him.

  “One has to, in my businesses.”

  “To begin with, I have no trouble with paying you, first, a fair sum,” Weiber-Krauss said. “You moved my patients here, instead of leaving them crumpled on some floor, and that earns something.”

  “Just being humane.” He wanted to say it would have been more efficient to feed them to Mr. Moto’s pigs down a way, but he continued to play the part.

  Weiber-Krauss adjusted his glasses again. “Tell me, did you get much of their blood on your skin?”

  “Well, there surely was a great deal of it everywhere, and still is,” Avery said. “Upstairs, if you’d care to see.”

  “Not necessary. And—before we continue with our business—would you tell that old man to come out from behind the far stall. I need no instruments to hear him breathing and chewing tobacco.”

  Avery winced and called out, “Homer!”

  Homer spit as he rose. He emerged from a stall, lowering the tarnished Colt he’d been aiming toward Weiber-Krauss and Smith. He closed the door behind him, was about to say something to Avery, when the bullwhip snapped across his face, splitting his eye. Slicing off the lid. He squealed horribly, lurched forward then back as if he were on rockers, blood washing the undraped eye. Crack, and the other eye was seared. Homer dropped the pistol, kicking it blind, while trying for the hammer on his belt. Crack. Another strike lay open his face, like the edge of a hot knife. Blood landed on hay, wall, and overhead beams, carried by the end of the whip.

  Avery had turned at the first explosion of the whip. His puzzled expression froze that way. A moment later, his lower jaw fell as though unhinged.

  A scalpel was in the side of his neck, buried to the handle. Weiber-Krauss stood by the open satchel, another scalpel ready, watching Avery gurgle, struggling forward on elephant-thick legs. The sheriff-mayor was trying to say something. Anything. But his knees gave out. Before he collapsed, the derringer discharged, blowing through his pocket and hitting his other hand.

  Smith waited for Avery’s stomach to hit the floor, then charged, fists cocked, to pummel him. Coal-heavy blows. Cracking the side of his face. Again. Splintering his collarbone. Smith’s smile showed few teeth and wide gums, as he leveled punch after punch, the impact pumping blood around the scalpel, the red spurting into the air and across the tack hanging on the walls.

  Weiber-Krauss allowed another punch, and then, “Enough! He still has to breathe and bleed. Don’t forget your orders.”

  Smith rose like a titan, stood, fists still balled, chest heaving, as Homer moaned. He was on his back, hands reaching up and out. Trying to roll.

  Weiber-Krauss shot the old man once in the mouth with a German pin-fire revolver, returned the gun to his satchel. The bullet had punched through, thudded into packed earth behind his head, and Homer had fallen supernaturally still. Then Weiber-Krauss cleaned his glasses with a monogrammed handkerchief, saying, “The three corpses first, then the other one. Then the one who is still alive. Can you manage?”

  A push of his clubbed foot, and Smith rolled Avery over with, “Just stupid fat and gristle. Nothing to me.”

  “Get to it. We’ll return to the Lady Freemont for cleaning, then move on.”

  Smith shook his head in refusal, stepping over Avery’s wide belly, moving for the horses in the stalls, and repeating: “Die pferde. Die pferde.”

  “Yes, yes, fine. Free their horses, then do your job with these others!”

  Smith ignored the critical tone of Weiber-Krauss’s voice, looked down to Homer, who was staring up through lidless eyes. “I should feel bad for him. He is me. Doing his job.”

  “He’d lived too long, and God knew it,” Weiber-Krauss said, retrieving the scalpel from Avery’s gullet. The man was breathing in his own blood, gurgling, red bubbles at the incision. Weiber-Krauss cleaned the wound with his handkerchief and trough water, then bandaged it, and the injured hand. When he was finished, he rose and shouted after Smith. “Hurry up with your precious horses, we have many miles to travel yet. And Mr. Cavanaugh has a ride, yet, with this other man.”

  * * *

  Bishop had ridden hours; finding this spot, a place where the cottonwoods had grown tall and close, their branches tangling, creating a thick fan of yellow leaves between them that hung like a thatched roof over a small patch of tall, dry grass.

  The quiet here, complete. At least on the outside.

  The killing of the three men did not trouble him. They had brought this on themselves. Helped by Av
ery, but they were the ones who put one foot before the other to climb those stairs.

  The older ghosts—they were the ones who gave him no peace. Beaudine and his killers, but they were only part of it. When Bishop and White Fox found the killers in a mine, they did not realize it was a trap. Beaudine set off charges that brought the dilapidated mine down on them. Bishop and White Fox made their way to the bottom of the mine, where it was flooded, swam through a breached wall into the icy river. Half-dead, they were rescued by a mountain man and nursed by him and a chief of the Crow. Good men, humanity at its finest. Just as Beaudine and his type were humanity at its worst.

  No, not quite its worst. There was Dev—

  The deepest pain of all was Bishop’s brother, who was not hanged. Someone else died in his place, put in the noose by a greedy warden who cherished money over life. Someone else’s life, anyway. Devlin was evil. He was behind everything. Behind Beaudine. Behind all the pain. Behind a power grab unprecedented in the history of the republic.

  Something in Bishop’s brain shut down when he revisited that anguish. It was like a railroad switch that pushed the train of thought to another track. If not for that, a man could go mad with rage and grief and lose all control . . .

  Bishop dozed, sitting up against his saddle, blanket to his shoulders, the shotgun rig lying alongside. He was trying for some true sleep, to put Hospitality House far behind, to finally be swallowed by the exhaustion he’d been fighting. There were a few moments of something between dreams and waking, but the bloody images of everything Devlin wrought played behind his lids, wouldn’t leave him alone.

  Shutting his eyes tighter only seemed to lock them in, trapping him. Bishop twisted, reacting, and the rig responded with his body, turning with him. He felt it, and woke.

  “Oh give me peace,” he said to the night.

  But the night or God or whoever was listening wasn’t going to help. Avery would. There was a bottle from the bar in his saddlebag, and he found it, taking a long pull. It settled his brain, let his body feel instead. He lay back again. The after-rain-ground was cool, and he felt that through the blanket while letting the whiskey do its work, as he closed his eyes again.